Homilies on Ephesians 23

'Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth.'

Having marshalled this host, and roused their eagerness (for both were needful, both that they should be marshalled in order, and that their spirit should be stirred up), and having encouraged them (for this too was needful), he now also arms them.

For there is no profit in weapons, if these things have not first been set in order, nor the spirit of the soldier's soul been roused.

For one must first arm him within, and then without.

But if this holds true in the case of the visible soldiers, much more in the case of the spiritual soldiers;

or rather, in their case it is not even possible to be armed from without, but everything is from within.

He roused their spirit and kindled it, he added courage, he set them in good order;

but see how he also puts the armour upon them.

The first branch of military tactics is to know how to stand well, and from this many things might come to pass.

For this reason he discourses much concerning standing, saying also elsewhere:

and again, 'So stand fast in the Lord';

and again, 'Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall';

again, 'That ye may be able, having accomplished all things, to stand.'

So it is not simply any kind of standing that he speaks of, but a well-ordered one;

and as many as are experienced in wars know how great a thing it is to know how to stand.

For if, in the case of boxers and wrestlers, the trainer enjoins this before all else—to stand—much more is it so in wars and in military affairs.

He who stands upright stands not loosely relaxed, nor leaning upon anything;

exact uprightness is displayed in one's standing.

So that those who are truly upright, these are they who stand;

but those who do not stand would not be upright, but slack and dissipated.

The self-indulgent man does not stand upright, but is bent over—the lascivious man, the lover of money.

He who knows how to stand firm will, from that very standing, as from a kind of foundation, find all the labors of the wrestling-match easy.

'Stand therefore,' he says, 'having girded your loins with truth.'

He is not speaking of a material belt;

for everything in this passage he means in a spiritual sense.

And observe in what manner: he advances step by step, as along a road.

First he girds up the soldier.

What then does this mean? The man who is dissolute and dissipated by his desires, whose thoughts trail along the ground and are dragged in the dust, him he braces up by means of the belt, not allowing him to be entangled by garments getting caught about his legs, but setting him free to run with unimpeded feet.

'Stand therefore,' he says, 'having girded your loins.'

Just as the keel is to a ship, so also in our case the loins are the foundation of the whole body;

for it is like a foundation, and upon it the whole is built up, as the sons of the physicians tell us.

Accordingly, in girding the loins he binds our soul together;

for he certainly does not mean this bodily loin, but is speaking in a spiritual sense.

And just as the loins are the foundation both of the parts below and of those above, so it is likewise with the spiritual loins. Those, for instance, who are often worn out with fatigue place their hands there as upon a foundation, and thus support themselves;

and for this reason the belt is used in warfare, that it may hold together and keep firm the foundation that is within us.

For this cause too, when we run, we gird ourselves;

that belt makes secure the strength that is in us.

Let this same thing, then, he says, take place also in the soul, and whatever we do, we shall be strong.

For this practice is especially fitting for soldiers.

Yes, one may say, but we gird this bodily loin with a leathern thong;

with what, then, do we gird ourselves? With the sum and head of our reasonings—I mean, with truth.

'Having girded,' he says, 'our loins with truth.'

Let us therefore love no falsehood; let us conduct all our affairs in truth; let us not lie to one another;

and even where opinion is concerned, let us seek what is true;

If we fence ourselves about with this, if we gird ourselves with truth, no one shall overcome us.

He who seeks the doctrine of truth shall not fall to the ground.

That what is not true is of the earth is plain from this, that all those outside the faith are enslaved to the passions, following after their own reasonings.

Wherefore, if we are but vigilant, we shall have no need of instruction in the discourses of the Greeks.

Do you see how soft and flabby those men are, capable of receiving nothing austere, nothing above human reasoning concerning God? For they are not girded with truth.

For this reason their loins are unstrung—that part which is receptive of the generative seeds, and the strength of the reasonings.

There is nothing, then, weaker than these men.

And do you again observe the Manichaeans, how they venture to utter everything out of their own reasonings? God, they say, could not have made the world without pre-existing matter.

Whence is this made plain? They speak these things from the ground and from the earth and from what is found among us.

Because man, they say, cannot make it in any other way.

Again, see what Marcion says:

God could not, on taking flesh, have remained pure.

Whence is this made plain? Because neither can men, he says.

Valentinus, again, having his reasonings dragging along the ground, speaks out of the earth;

and in like manner Paul of Samosata, and Arius.

For what does he say? God could not, in begetting, have begotten without passion.

Whence do you dare to say this, O Arius? From what is found among us.

Do you see how all of them have their reasonings dragging along the ground, all slackened, all breathing of the earth? And—

so much as concerns doctrines, thus it is;

and as concerns life again, the fornicators, the lovers of money, the lovers of glory, the lovers of all other such things, are dragged along the ground;

they have not their loins standing firm, so as to rest when wearied; but if they grow weary, they do not put down the hand and stand fast, but fall to pieces.

But he who is girded with truth, first of all shall never grow weary;

and secondly, even should he grow weary, he shall rest upon the truth itself.

For tell me, will poverty make him weary? By no means;

for he rests upon the true riches, and through poverty he shall come to know the true poverty.

But will slavery make him weary? By no means;

for he knows the true slavery.

But sickness? Neither this;

'Let your loins,' says Christ, 'be girded, and your lamps burning,' so that we may keep the light unextinguished.

This too they that came forth out of Egypt were commanded to do, and they ate the Passover girded.

And for what reason, one may ask, did they eat in this manner? Do you wish to learn the whole matter according to the history, or according to the higher (allegorical) sense? I, for my part, will speak of both;

for I do not do this merely that I may state the solution, but that our words may also become a work within you.

They were girded, he says, and their staves were in their hands, and their sandals on their feet, and thus they ate the Passover.

Awful and fearful are the mysteries, and having great depth.

But if they are so fearful in the types, much more so in the truth.

They come forth out of Egypt, they eat the Passover.

Attend closely: it is the posture of men on a journey;

for to have sandals, and staves in their hands, and to eat standing, signifies nothing else but this.

Do you wish first to hear the history, or the higher meaning? The history is better (to begin with).

What then does the history mean? The Jews were an ungrateful people, and were continually forgetting the benefits of God.

Desiring therefore to bring them, even against their will, to the remembrance of these things, He appoints as law this manner of eating the Passover.

For what purpose? That, being bound at each recurring season to observe the ordinance, they might of necessity also remember the God who led them out.

God, then, bound His benefits to them not by the season alone, but also by the very posture of the eaters.

For on this account they eat girded and shod, that when questioned they might say: We were ready for a journey, and We were about to go forth out of Egypt unto the land of promise.

This, then, is the type according to the history;

And we too eat a Passover, even Christ;

for 'Christ our Passover,' he says, 'was sacrificed.'

So then we too eat a Passover, one far better than that of the Law.

Therefore we too ought to eat with our loins girded and our sandals on our feet.

Why so? That we too may be ready for the departure, ready for the pilgrimage that leads hence.

Let none of those who eat this Passover look toward Egypt, but toward heaven, toward the Jerusalem that is above.

For this reason you eat with your loins girded, for this reason with sandals on your feet, that you may learn that as soon as you begin to eat the Passover, you must set out on your journey and take to the road.

and that you must go forth out of Egypt, and while you remain, remain thenceforth as in a foreign land.

For our commonwealth, he says, is in heaven; and our whole life must ever be kept in readiness, so that when we are called we may not delay, but may say:

But this, indeed, Paul was able to say, he who was conscious of no evil in himself;

but I, who need much time for repentance, am not able to say it.

And that this girding belongs to a watchful soul, hear God saying to that righteous man:

Nay, but gird up your loins like a man;

I will ask you, and you shall answer me.

This he says to all the saints, and this too he says to Moses.

And he himself appears girded in Ezekiel;

or rather, the angels too appear to us girded, inasmuch as they are soldiers.

For the standing firm comes about nobly, and as it were from the standing there follows the being girded.

Therefore let us too gird ourselves about;

for we too are about to go forth, and many are the hardships that lie between.

When we have passed through this plain, the devil stands ready at once, doing and contriving everything, so that those who have been saved out of Egypt, those who have

crossed the Red Sea, those who at one stroke have been freed from the demons and from countless plagues, these very ones he seeks to seize and destroy.

But if we are sober, we too have a pillar of fire, the grace of the Spirit;

the same both gives light and casts a shade.

or rather, we have not manna, but something far greater than manna;

spiritual drink, not water flowing forth from a rock.

We have also a camp, dwelling in the wilderness even now.

For truly, truly, even now the earth has become a wilderness of virtue, and more so than that one.

Why was that wilderness a thing to flee from? Was it not because it had scorpions in it, and vipers? In which, he says, no man passed through.

But that wilderness is not, no, is not so barren of fruits as is human nature.

How many scorpions now, how many vipers throughout this wilderness, how many serpents, how many broods of vipers are these through whom we have now passed? But let us not be afraid;

for it is not Moses who commands this exodus, but Jesus.

How then may we not suffer the same things? Let us not do the same things, and we shall not suffer the same things.

They murmured, they were ungrateful;

let us therefore not suffer these same things.

How did all those fall? They despised the land that was to be desired.

How did they despise it? And yet they had marvelled at it.

By growing soft, and by not being willing to take up toils on its behalf.

Let us therefore not despise heaven;

For among us too a fruit has been brought from heaven, not a cluster of grapes carried in jars, but the pledge of the Spirit, the commonwealth that is in the heavens, which Paul taught, which the whole choir of the apostles taught, those wondrous husbandmen.

It was not Caleb the son of Jephunneh, nor Joshua the son of Nun, who brought these fruits, but Jesus the Son of the Father of mercies, the Son of the God who truly is, who brought all virtue, who brought down to us all the fruits from thence, I mean the heavenly hymns.

For what the Cherubim say on high, this he has commanded us also to say: Holy, holy, holy.

He brought us the citizenship of the angels;

The angels neither marry nor are given in marriage;

this good thing too he planted here below;

those beings love not money, nor any of the other things;

and this too he sowed within us;

those beings do not die;

this too he has bestowed upon us;

for death is no longer death, but a sleep.

For hear him saying:

Lazarus our friend has fallen asleep.

Have you seen the fruits of the Jerusalem that is above? And what is yet more wonderful, that the war has not yet been decided, but before the promise all these things have been granted to us.

For those men, even when they had come into the land of promise, still had to labour;

for if they had been willing to obey God, without weapons and without battle array they would have taken all the cities;

at Jericho at least, having the appearance rather of men dancing than of men making war, they routed it.

But we do not war after entering into the land of promise, that is, into heaven, but only so long as we are in the wilderness, that is, in the present life.

For he who has entered into his rest, has himself also rested from his works, as God did from his own.

Let us therefore not grow weary in doing good;

for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.

Do you see how, just as he led those men, so he leads us also? There, in the matter of the manna and the wilderness, it says: He that gathered much had nothing over;

and he that gathered little had no lack.

And we too have been commanded this, not to lay up treasure upon the earth.

But if we do lay up treasure, it is no longer the perceptible worm that corrupts it, as in the case of the manna, but the worm that endures forever with the fire.

Let us therefore work at everything, so that we may not make ready food for the worm;

For he that gathered much, it says, had nothing over.

For this too comes to pass with us every day;

for we all fill up the same measure of the belly;

and the surplus is but an addition of senseless cares.

For what he was afterward about to hand down, saying, Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, this he had already taught from of old, and even so they did not receive it.

But let us not be insatiable, not ungrateful, let us not seek splendid houses;

for we are on a journey, we do not settle down to dwell.

And so, if a man knows that the present life is a certain road and a campaign, and, as one might say in their own idiom, an encampment, he will not seek out splendid buildings.

And, as one might say, using the term current among them, a campment—he will not go seeking splendid dwellings.

For tell me, who, even were he exceedingly wealthy, would choose to build splendid houses in what is called an encampment? Not a single one.

For he would become a laughing-stock, and he would be building for his enemies, and would only draw them upon himself the more.

So then, if we are watchful, neither shall we.

The present life differs in nothing from a campaign and an encampment.

Wherefore I exhort you, let us do everything so as to lay up no treasure here.

For if the thief should come, we shall speedily be removed.

'Watch,' He says, 'for you know not at what hour the thief comes.'

Before, therefore, he comes, let us send everything away to our own homeland.

But here let us be lightly girded, that we may be able to prevail over our enemies.

And may it come to pass that, having prevailed over them, we be counted worthy in the day of the crowns of that incorruptible glory, by the grace and loving-kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom to the Father together with the Holy Spirit, and so forth.